Can see we're your coming from but think Cooke's personal issues and the pressure of the move are why his career went down the pan.

It sounds like I'm underating Swain here, which I'm not but for a hooker to have that kind of influence he'd have probabally had to have been the greatest of all time, Cooke could find that cut out pass as good as anyone I've seen, sure speed of distribution from DH would have helped but he'd still have that ability even if someone else was at dummy half, It would be like saying the likes of Cronk, Slater, Inglis would not be good at what they do without Cam Smith, for me it's just top players working well together, in the same way that Swain, Cooke and Horne worked well together in that period, Cooke's contribution to that side was never replaced.

Like I say Swain was a top player, was adored at Melbourne too, but I think most would agree that his influence was down to his defence, leadership and reading of the game, rather then a direct attacking influence, I'd even say in that sense, a fully fit Richard Horne was more influential to our attack.

I feel the same. Whilst I think houghton has some great qualities, he isn;t a top class hooker but, as you say, he's untouchable

In this thread I was one of the 1St to criticise Danny
Feel it's gone to far the other way now. He has limitations but each season he seems to improve slightly in the areas he needs to. When the rest of the team is so disjointed and out of sync attack wise it's sometimes made him look worse.
We need to play to his strengths which for me would mean him coming off the bench and bringing his energy and running game after Aaron has hopefully got some momentum into our forwards.
Danny went away from his running game to much last year and spent to much time trying to be a pivot!

And massively in agreement about Berringan, criminal how he was wasted here.

It is about balance there's no doubt. I have no criticism of Houghton because he does everything to the absolute best of his ability. What's frustrating is hearing all of the praise above and beyond those qualities he has and the mythology that's created. As you say he has his limitations , there has been some improvement in some areas but he's not suddenly going to become Cam Smith or anywhere near and I worry that as long as he's here we're never going to consider having a better player in his position. In my opinion because that role is so vital to the way a team plays that's a handicap that we're having to work around all of the time and it's especially difficult to do that with the pivots we've had , or haven't had , recently.

I think that works both ways - is he really so bad? Too many opinions become facts.

Houghton is very good imo he is in a position what is involved in a lot of the game possibly the most important on the pitch, its one what needs good players around him to compliment his work like cam smith,cronk,slater.